Key gene enables plants to conquer landMay 19, 2016www.eurekalert.orgResearch identifies a gene that assisted the transition of plants from water to land 500 million years ago. Read Full Story

Crows count on number neuronsJune 8, 2015www.sciencedaily.comCrow brains evolved for counting. Read Full Story

Scientists reconstruct evolutionary history of whale hearing with rare museum collectionMarch 11, 2015www.sciencedaily.comTracing the development of hearing in whales. Read Full Story

Reshaping the horse through millennia: Sequencing reveals genes selected by humans in domesticationDecember 15, 2014www.sciencedaily.comHuman domestication shaped the horse. Read Full Story

Seeing Dinosaur Feathers in a New LightOct. 30, 2014www.sciencedaily.comEvolution of feathers made dinosaurs colorful. Read Full Story

Plants may use newly discovered molecular language to communicate.August 14, 2014www.sciencedaily.comScientific discovery of a potentially new form of plant communication. Read Full Story

New Fossil Suggests More Complex Evolution for Feathers and FlightJuly 2nd, 2014blogs.discovermagazine.comA new look at how both feathers and flight may have evolved among theropod dinosaurs -aka- the ancestors of modern birds. Read Full Story

Flowers' Polarization Help Bees Find FoodJune 5th, 2014www.sciencedaily.comBees use their ability to 'see' polarized light when foraging for food, researchers have discovered. This is the first time bees have been found to use this ability for something other than navigation. Read Full Story

Ancient Whale Fossils Reveal Early Origin of EcolocationWed. March 12, 2014www.livescience.comAn ancient whale used sound beams to navigate and stalk prey 28 million years ago, an analysis of a new fossil suggests. Read Full Story

One-Quarter of Sharks and Rays at Risk of ExtinctionTue. Jan. 21, 2014www.livescience.comA quarter of the world's sharks and rays are at risk of extinction, according to a new assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).Read Full Story

Clues to how plants evolved to cope with coldDec. 22, 2013Science DailyResearchers have found new clues to how plants evolved to withstand wintry weather. In a study to appear in the December 22 issue of the journal Nature, the team constructed an evolutionary tree of more than 32,000 species of flowering plants – the largest time-scaled evolutionary tree to date. Read Full Story

Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocationSeptember 6, 2013Science News
Despite being separated by millions of years of evolution, dozens of genes in dolphins and bats changed in the same manner to give the species their ability to echolocate. Read Full Story

How 'Parrot dinosaur' Switched
from four feet to two as it grewJune 28, 2013Science Daily
Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn have shown how one of the best-known dinosaurs switched from four feet to two as it grew. Read Full Story

Study of Gene Expression Has Revealed First Steps of Evolution in Gene Regulation in MiceAugust 2, 2013Science Daily
A study of gene expression led by scientists at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the University of Cambridge has revealed the first steps of evolution in gene regulation in mice. Read Full Story

Horse Fossil Yeilds Astonishingly Old GenomeJune 26, 2013Scientific American
Researchers have recovered DNA from a nearly 700,000-year-old horse fossil and assembled a draft of the animal’s genome from it. It is the oldest complete genome to date by a long shot–hundreds of thousands of years older than the previous record holder, which came from an archaic human that lived around 80,000 years ago. Read Full Story

Cretaceous period:
Facts About
Animals, Plants & Climate
May 1, 2013Live Science
The Cretaceous Period was the last and longest segment of the Mesozoic Era. It lasted approximately 79 million years, from the minor extinction event that closed the Jurassic Period about 145.5 million years ago to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event dated at 65.5 million years ago. Read Full Story

Hundreds of Dinosaurs Egg Fossils Found
March 13, 2013
Live Science
Researchers in northeastern Spain say they've uncovered hundreds of dinosaur egg fossils, including four kinds that had never been found before in the region. The eggs likely were left behind by sauropods millions of years ago. Read Full Story

Expensive Organs: Guppies Reveal
The Cost Of Big Brains
January 3, 2013Scientific AmericanThere’s a lot to be said for smarts—at least we humans, with some of the biggest brains in relation to our bodies in the animal kingdom, certainly seem to think so. Read Full Story

The Bat: A Long-lived, Virus-Proof AnomalyJanuary 1, 2013Discovery MagazineBats are pretty impressive critters. They are notorious for carrying viruses like Ebola and SARS, but somehow avoid getting these diseases themselves. They are the only mammal that can fly, and they live far longer than other mammals their size. What’s their secret? Read Full Story

New Whale Shark Study Used Metalomics to Help Understand Shark and Ray Health
November 16, 2012Science DailyNew research from Georgia Aquarium and Georgia Institute of Technology provides evidence that a suite of techniques called "metabolomics" can be used to determine the health status of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), the world's largest fish species.Read Full Story

Can the Burrowing owl population
rebound in North Amercia?November 16, 2012Scientific AmericanWestern burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) are tiny, long-legged members of the owl family, native to the Americas and preferring open landscapes where they can dig new holes or use existing ones (such as abandoned prairie dog, skunk or armadillo homes) to nest and rear their young. Read Full Story

How Do Octopuses Navigate?May 24, 2012Scientific AmericanGetting around is complicated business. Every year, animals traverse miles of sky and sea (and land), chasing warmth or food or mates as the planet rotates and the seasons change.Read Full Story

Common Pesticide Implicated Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
April 6, 2012Scientific American
Honeybee colonies have been mysteriously dying off all over the globe, leaving scientists scratching their heads—and important crops languishing in the fields unpollinated.Read Full Story

Evolution - New Scientist - 2/21/12
Get the latest news on evolution from New Scientist magazine. Read Full Story

Darwin’s Degenerates – Evolution’s Finest | Observations - 2/12/12 Scientific American
153 years ago on November 24th a naturalist named Charles Darwin published a book with a rather long and cumbersome title. Read Full Story

Jailbreak Rat: Selfless Rodents Spring Their Pals and Share Their Sweets - 12/8/11 Scientific American
A new study suggests that rodents are far more altruistic than previously thoughtRead Full Story

Birds Caught in the Act of Becoming a New Species - 12/8/11 Science Daily
A study of South American songbirds completed by the Department of Biology at Queen's University and the Argentine Museum of Natural History, has discovered these birds differ dramatically in colour and song yet show very little genetic differences, indicating they are on the road to becoming a new species. Read Full Story

Unraveling the Causes of the Ice Age Megafauna Extinctions - 11/2/11 Science Daily
Was it humans or climate change that caused the extinctions of the iconic Ice Age mammals (megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth? Read Full Story

I've Got Your Back - 10/2/11 Scientific American
New evidence shows that chimpanzees aren't as selfish as many scientists thought.Read Full Story

Fossils Raise Questions about Human Ancestry - 9/8/11 Scientific American
New descriptions of Australopithecus sediba fossils have added to debates about the species' place in the human lineage. Five papers published today in Science describe the skull, pelvis, hands and feet of the ancient hominin unearthed three years ago in South Africa. Read Full Story

U.S. National Parks' Cultural and Natural Resources Threatened - 7/1/2011Scientific Insider
Unchecked development, thousands of invasive species, climate change, and reduced budgets and staff all threaten America's national parks... Read Full Story

Emergency Action Plan Aims to Help the World's Most Endangered Chimpanzee - 6/30/2011 Scientific American
Earlier this month, scientists for the Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance presented new research that predicted the extinction of the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti), the world's rarest chimpanzee subspecies, within as little as... Read Full Story

Winners of Mass Extinction: With Predators Gone, Prey Thrive - 5/3/2011 Science Daily
In modern ecology, the removal or addition of a predator to an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.Read Full Story

New Evidence Details Spread of Amphibian-Killing Disease from Mexico Through Central America - 5/2/2011 Science Daily
There's a crisis among the world's amphibians -- about 40 percent of amphibian species have dwindled in numbers in just three decades. Now, museum jars stuffed full of amphibians may help scientists decide whether this wave of extinctions was caused by a fungal infection... Read Full Story

Early Birds Smelled Good - 4/12/2011 Science Mag
About 65 million years ago, most of the dinosaurs and many other animals and plants were wiped off Earth, probably due to an asteroid hitting our planet. Researchers have long debated how and why some species survived the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, marked in ancient rocks by a transition called the K-T boundary. A new study suggests that one group of survivors, the birds, may have sniffed their way across by evolving an enhanced sense of smell. Read Full Story

Wolves lose, tigers gain, penguins in peril and other updates from the brink - 4/11/2011 Scientific Daily
Sometimes there are so many stories about endangered species that not all of them can be covered in depth by this blog. Here are some quick updates on stories previously covered in Extinction Countdown... Read Full Story